I Met a Man Who Wasn't There
by Vol lady
Summary: What if you meet a spirit in the dark of night and it's yourself? Happy late Halloween.
1. Chapter 1

I Met a Man Who Wasn't There

Chapter 1

Two in the morning. Jarrod was tired from writing since dinner ended. He dragged himself out the library after putting the lights out there, then put the lights out in the living room and the foyer. He climbed the stairs to go to bed, and saw him there.

In the darkened hallway, between him and his bedroom, a figure. The shadow of someone standing there, a man but neither of his brothers. "Who are you? What do you want?"

The man did not answer, and he did not move.

"Answer me. Who are you and what do you want?"

"It's only you," the man said.

"What?" Jarrod asked.

The man took slow steps toward him. "It's only you," he repeated, and then Jarrod saw who it was.

He saw himself.

"What - ?" Jarrod said, in a low whisper, and he stepped back and nearly fell down the stairs. He grabbed the banister to get stable.

And then Jarrod felt a dreadful chill. The man came closer and then seemed to move into him, and Jarrod shivered as a cold blast of air shot right through him.

And then the man was gone. Jarrod looked all around, in the hall, back down the stairs, into the darkened foyer. No one was there. Jarrod couldn't let go of the banister. He didn't know why. He just couldn't move.

 _What was that?_ Jarrod couldn't think. He couldn't understand what had just happened. He looked at himself, touched his face, to make sure he was awake and not sleepwalking. He was awake. Something had just happened. Something that was not a dream.

He hadn't been drinking for the last five hours, and he'd had a sandwich only an hour ago. None of this was imaginary. None of this was because he was drunk or low on blood sugar. Something had just happened. Something that was real.

Jarrod started down the hall toward the wc. He could hardly pick up his feet, they were so heavy. His head was swimming. What had just happened? If he wasn't drunk, if his blood sugar wasn't low, if he wasn't asleep – what had just happened?

He went to the wc and cleaned up, sloppily. He made it to his room, went inside and closed the door behind him. He was so cold he was shivering. He could hardly change out of his clothes and into his bedclothes and once he was in bed he couldn't wait to close his eyes. He didn't want to see that there was someone else in the room with him. But even though he was tired, he couldn't sleep. He was on high alert. His eyes were closed, but he was listening, listening for anything and everything.

Nothing happened. He fell asleep and didn't realize he was asleep until suddenly sunlight was coming in the window. He sat up on the edge of the bed.

Jarrod was convinced now that it had all been a dream. But he was still shaking. He got himself to the wc, cleaned up and shaved, then dressed and went downstairs.

"Well, I was about to go after you," Victoria said as she met him in the foyer. "Everyone's had breakfast and gone on their way."

"I'm sorry," Jarrod said. "I was up late working and overslept."

Victoria looked at him oddly. "Are you all right?

"Yes, I'm fine," Jarrod said.

"You don't look like yourself."

Her choice of words made Jarrod flinch. "What?"

"You don't look well."

"Mother, don't fuss, I'm fine, but I do need to eat," Jarrod said. "I'll go see what Silas has in the kitchen."

Jarrod went into the kitchen, and Victoria just watched him go. She wasn't inclined to hover, but he looked – he looked like he'd seen a ghost.

Silas was cleaning up in the kitchen, but gave Jarrod a smile. "Good morning, Mr. Jarrod. I have some food in the warmer for you."

"Thank you, Silas," Jarrod said.

Jarrod sat at the kitchen table, and Silas brought him a cup of coffee. When Silas returned with a plate of eggs and ham, Jarrod was drinking the coffee. He held the cup in both hands, tight. Silas noticed. "You feeling under the weather this morning, Mr. Jarrod?" he asked.

"No, I just didn't get enough sleep," Jarrod said.

"I saw you working awful late. You best not do that again tonight."

"You're right there, Silas," Jarrod said. The coffee tasted good. The eggs and ham tasted better. But what happened the night before still bothered him. He still couldn't make sense of it. He looked over at Silas, so calm and businesslike as he went about his morning routine. Silas was always like that. Very little frightened that man. "Silas," Jarrod said, "have you ever run into anyone in this house you – " He had trouble figuring out the rest of the sentence. "You didn't expect to see?"

Silas asked, "What exactly do you mean, Mr. Jarrod?"

Jarrod hesitated. This was a bad idea, talking to Silas about it, but it was hardly something he could talk to his mother about. "I saw someone last night, in the hall."

Silas's eyes grew wide. "You saw somebody? In the house?"

"Not exactly somebody, Silas," Jarrod said, and took a deep breath, and lied, a little bit. "I thought I saw someone familiar in the hall upstairs, about two o'clock this morning."

"Oh," Silas said. Understanding dawned. "You weren't expecting this person so you think you saw a spirit."

Jarrod was amazed that Silas seemed relieved about it. "Sort of," Jarrod said.

"Shadows do funny things in this house, Mr. Jarrod, it's so big."

Jarrod hesitated to say what he said next. "Have any of those shadows ever talked to you, Silas?"

Now Silas's face screwed up a little. "Not exactly, Mr. Jarrod. They made sounds. But you were pretty tired last night. You probably saw a shadow and if you thought it talked to you, it was probably the wind."

Jarrod thought Silas may have had something there. "Has that happened to you?"

"Once or twice," Silas admitted. "Never in the daytime, only when the house is dark and quiet. Shadows and wind."

Jarrod sighed. "You're probably right, Silas. And since I was overtired, I probably let my imagination run away with me."

Silas chuckled. "That can happen, Mr. Jarrod."

"Do me a favor, would you? Don't mention this to anyone else. It's a little embarrassing."

Silas laughed again. "Not a word, Mr. Jarrod. More coffee?"

"Please."

XXXXXXX

It was another late night with the brief he was working on. "Brief" was definitely a misnomer in this case, because the thing was going to be over fifty pages long when he was done with it. Jarrod nibbled on a sandwich and drank milk as he worked, so he was certain his blood sugar was fine, but his fatigue started to roll over him at about midnight. He was not happy with what he was writing after that.

He took the next hour to look over what he had written. Parts of it were fine, but parts were not what he wanted them to be. If you were going to put something this long in front of a court, you'd better make the language easy on the brain, or you'd never make your point understood. And there were places Jarrod felt like the language was not easy to follow. For now, he just marked them, resolving to come back in the morning and begin again at the beginning. Maybe if he cleaned up what he'd already written, the rest would begin to flow better. Right now, the brief was like water backed up against a big dam.

Jarrod put the lights out and headed upstairs, but he wouldn't kid himself. He was nervous, looking ahead carefully for any sign of his spectral visitor from the night before. Shadows and wind, that's what Silas had said. Jarrod kept repeating the words to himself as he climbed. When he got to the top of the stairs, he stopped and looked down the hall toward the bedrooms and the wc. The lights were low in the hall, leaving several dark areas between them, but so far, nothing in the darkness was moving. Jarrod tried to sense a breeze, but there wasn't any, not so far. No shadows, no wind. Jarrod swallowed and began to move toward the wc.

One of the shadows moved.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Jarrod stopped. "Who's there?" he asked.

The shadow took a shape. Jarrod instinctively backed up, but then he made a decision. No shadow was going to freeze him in his tracks again. He began walking slowly toward it.

He met himself again.

Jarrod stopped, staring. "Who are you? What do you want?"

"It's only you," the shadow said.

"No, you're not me," Jarrod said. "Who are you?"

The other Jarrod moved toward him, and just like the night before, Jarrod felt a cold chill go through him. He slammed his eyes shut, and even if he couldn't see whatever it was coming toward him, he could feel it go through him again like a freezing wind. "Long," the other Jarrod said as the chill dissipated.

Jarrod opened his eyes. Everything looked normal. There was no moving shadow, no wind, no sound. _Long?_ Jarrod didn't understand what that was supposed to mean, but he had heard the word clear as a bell, coming from the other him.

Jarrod got ready for bed and crawled in under the blankets, not as unnerved as he had been the night before but not at ease, either. Some measure of curiosity had settled into him. Long? What was long? Too many long hours? Or had it just been the wind through someone's open window?

Again, he fell asleep without realizing it and woke up late. This time, though, he was not so late that he missed breakfast. Everyone was still eating when he came in. "Sorry," he said. "I worked late again and overslept."

"You gotta cut that out," Nick said. "You woke me up last night."

"What do you mean, I woke you up?" Jarrod asked as Nick poured him some coffee.

"You were talking to yourself in the hall," Nick said.

And Jarrod thought, _you don't know how right you are._ But he was embarrassed now. He didn't know how to explain what had been happening in the upstairs hall the past couple nights. "I'm sorry about that," Jarrod said.

Nick handed him a plate of eggs. As Jarrod put some on his own plate, Victoria asked, "Was something bothering you last night?"

"Just my brief," Jarrod said. "I need to take a fresh look at the whole thing today."

"Would you like to read it to me, Jarrod?" Audra asked. "Maybe I can help."

"No, thanks, honey, you'd fall asleep before I finished the first page," Jarrod said. "And it's pretty long – " He stopped. _Long_. The other Jarrod had said the word "long" to him.

When Jarrod stopped talking, he stopped moving too, with his fork halfway to his mouth. Everyone else looked at him, then at each other. "Jarrod?" Victoria said.

Jarrod was suddenly alert again. "Oh, I'm sorry. I just said something that struck a chord with me about the brief."

"Boy, howdy, you'd better put that brief out of your mind while you're eating, at least," Heath said. "You're beginning to spook the rest of us."

 _Spook_. Another word that struck a chord. Jarrod only hesitated a moment before continuing to eat this time, but his eyes didn't recover. Jarrod's eyes were particularly expressive in general. Whatever was going on in his thoughts always came out through his eyes, and now he was looking almost as if something were haunting him.

"Tell you what," Nick said. "Before we head out this morning, Heath and I are gonna have a chat with you and take a quick look at this brief of yours. If it's gone wrong somewhere, maybe we can help you spot where."

Jarrod said, "Nick, the thing is already over twenty pages long."

"Nevermind that," Nick said. "Just put the whole thing out of your mind, eat your breakfast, and Heath and I will help you out before we head out into the field."

Nick would brook no argument on the subject. Within fifteen minutes, he and Heath had joined Jarrod in the study. Jarrod was standing by the mantle, arms crossed, watching his brothers each take a quick look at half of his brief. It was clear right away, from the confused look on Nick's face, that he had no idea what he was reading.

"Put it down, boys," Jarrod said. "This isn't gonna help. You have no idea what I'm writing about."

Heath put his half down on the desk. "That's the truth, but I'll tell you, Jarrod, something's bothering you. You never took up talking to yourself in the hall at night before, at least not since I've been here."

Nick put his part of the brief down, too. "You never looked so much like you've been seeing ghosts, either," Nick said. "I just used this brief as an excuse to get a few minutes alone with you. What's going on? What's bothering you?"

 _Oh, boy, how am I going to explain this and not sound like I've gone insane?_ Jarrod thought. "All right," he said. "Maybe it's the brief and maybe it's not. Maybe I just haven't been getting enough sleep or working too hard or both."

"You've been eating all right?" Nick asked, knowing how haywire his brother's head could go if he didn't eat regularly.

"Yeah, I eat late at night, that's not the problem," Jarrod said. Then he took a deep breath and decided to lay it all out. "The past couple nights, after I've gone up to bed, I've been seeing someone in the hall."

Both Nick and Heath perked up.

"Someone who – talks to me," Jarrod said.

"Who?" Heath asked.

Jarrod swallowed. "Me. I see me. I talk to me."

"What?" Nick asked, unbelieving.

"This – form appears in the hall and turns into me and talks to me before he shoots through me like a cold wind. And it's not a dream. I'm wide awake, I've had enough to eat, I haven't been drinking. It's just damned real."

Nick and Heath looked at each other. Nick said, "What does this other you say to you?"

"The first night when I asked who it was, he said, 'It's just you,'" Jarrod said. "Last night, he said the word 'long.'"

"That's it?" Nick asked. "Nothing else?"

"Not yet," Jarrod said.

"You expect to see him again?"

"Nick, I don't know what it is or where it's coming from, but it seems determined to bother me, so yes, I expect to see it again," Jarrod said.

Nick and Heath looked at each other again. Nick said, "Well, I suppose Heath and I could take turns at guard duty in the hall at night."

"No, no," Jarrod protested. "That's ridiculous. The whole thing is ridiculous, but since I can't explain it away with sleepwalking or not eating right or being too tired, I'm stuck with it."

Nick looked worriedly at Heath, butHeath just shrugged. "I don't know what all the fuss is about. Seems pretty obvious to me."

"Obvious?" Jarrod said.

"How is it obvious?" Nick asked.

"It happens late at night when you're really tired, after you been working on that brief, right?" Heath said.

Jarrod nodded.

"And you've been working on that thing for what, two or three days now?"

"Four," Jarrod said.

"It seems to me you've been working on it for four days and you still don't like it. You're probably fighting with yourself over something about it. You're fighting with yourself while you write it, and when you quit and you aren't happy with it, you keep fighting with yourself about it when you go to bed. Shadows and wind play with your head because you're not settled with your work. Something in your head is trying to tell you what's wrong with your work, probably that it's too long."

Jarrod and Nick looked at each other. "I suppose my other self is telling me where I'm going wrong," Jarrod said.

Heath shrugged. "He says it's too long. Even you're starting to say it's too long. Shorten it up, finish it, and this man who isn't there will go away."

Nick looked at Jarrod and gave a shrug. "The boy might have something there."

Jarrod suddenly grew very thoughtful. "If I'm still not happy with it tonight, and this other me turns up again – I wonder what he would say if I asked him what to do with the brief? Would he just say I should shorten it?" Jarrod shrugged. "Maybe he'd have some other ideas too?"

Nick laughed, but Heath shrugged again, and said seriously, "Ask him."

Nick looked at his brothers and decided to give in to the bizarre logic of asking your doppelganger for his opinion. He shrugged, too. Jarrod nodded, but he also noticed something about Heath's choice of words, something Nick probably wouldn't have noticed, something that made Jarrod think Heath's idea had some real validity to it. Jarrod filed it away for later, maybe after this was over, maybe after they found out if Heath's idea was right.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Jarrod worked hard on rewriting the first twenty pages of his brief, and he happily whittled it down to sixteen pages. As the evening hours turned into late night hours, he started having trouble with it again. The words were just not working. There were too many of them, and they didn't flow in a way that was easy to read. The same problem he'd had before. At just past one, Jarrod sighed and gave up.

And he found himself hoping that his other self would be up there waiting in the hall for him. He laughed at himself for that. This nightly specter had scared him for two nights in a row, and now he was afraid his other self wouldn't be there. Shaking his head at himself, Jarrod put out the lights in the library, then put out the ones in the living room and the foyer and climbed the stairs again.

He stopped at the top and looked down the hall. Again, the shadows sat quietly between the lights from the sconces on the wall. Again, he sensed no breeze at all. He waited a few steps from the top of the stairs.

 _Where's your ghost when you really want him?_

As if someone had heard his thoughts, a shadow – a different one from the night before – began to change shape. Jarrod watched, eager this time, not shaken. "Hello," he said.

The shadow took form and began to move toward him. Jarrod took a couple steps forward, but when the form stopped, Jarrod stopped.

"Talk to me," Jarrod said. "Tell me who you are and what you want."

He heard the words, "It's only you."

And then, as the form turned into a man he recognized all too well, Jarrod smiled. "Are you trying to tell me I've been working too long into the night, or are you trying to tell me my brief is too long? What does 'long' mean?"

His other self smiled, too, and just said, "Edit."

"The brief?" Jarrod asked. "It's still just too long? Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

The man just said, "Edit more."

Then that cold air came at Jarrod again. He just closed his eyes and let it wash over him, and now he understood. Whatever this thing was – spirit, specter, other self – he had made his message clear. His other self was confirming what Jarrod himself had come to think. The brief was far too wordy, too long. Jarrod needed to go back over it again and even again if necessary, and make his brief briefer everywhere he could.

Jarrod went on to bed. He had no idea whether he would see his visitor again if he got back to work in the morning and worked harder at cutting this novel-sized brief down to a readable length, but he didn't worry about it anymore either. He slept better than he had in nearly a week.

XXXXXXX

Come morning, Jarrod was up before the rest of the crowd. Nick and Heath came in together and were startled to see him at the table, looking well-rested, eating heartily.

"Well, looks like you had a good conversation with your other you last night," Nick said as he and Heath sat down.

Jarrod said, "Uh-huh, but let's leave it alone. I don't want to get the women all nervous about spirits haunting the house. I'll cut this brief down to size and finish it as fast as I can and get it to my secretary today, and chances are my other self won't be back for a while."

"I hope you're right," Heath said. "You look a whole lot better this morning than you have for a while."

"That's because I know what I'm doing now and I know my other self agrees with me," Jarrod said. "That brief is going to be brilliant, and I am going to win my case."

Nick laughed. "That's a handy counselor you got there, Counselor."

"Might very well be," Jarrod said.

XXXXXXX

Jarrod was inspired and worked like a demon. True to his intentions, he finished his brief, edited it thoughtfully, and was very happy with it now. He took it to town and gave it to his secretary. She grinned, saying, "Another work of art, Mr. Barkley?"

"Best one I ever wrote," Jarrod said, grinning back.

The rest of the day found Jarrod enjoying a little poker at Harry's saloon, winning a little money, and riding at a brisk clip as he took the long way home. He didn't even realize he had enjoyed the whole afternoon away until he got home and saw his brothers were there, in from the field in time for dinner. Nick was leading his horse and Heath's into the stable.

"All done now, are we?" Nick yelled to his older brother.

Jarrod dismounted. "All done." Jarrod spotted Heath by the corral, smoking a cigar and watching the two horses in there nip and harass each other. "Our little brother is pretty thoughtful this evening, isn't he?"

"Naw, he just won a bet from me and now I have to see to his horse as well as mine," Nick said. "Give me yours, too. I might as well see to them all."

Jarrod chuckled, handing his horse off to Nick, and then he wandered over to where Heath was leaning on the corral fence. Jarrod remembered Heath's words from the day before, when he offered his advice that seemed to have helped Jarrod get through his writer's block. He remembered the chord Heath's exact words had struck with him. Now was a pretty good time to talk to him about them.

"Nice evening," Jarrod said as he approached.

Heath looked over his shoulder at him. "Looks like you've got that brief out of your hair."

Jarrod smiled and leaned his arms on the top rail of the corral fence. "Yeah, and I'm happy with it. Thanks for your advice, by the way. I think it broke the logjam."

"Glad to hear it," Heath said.

"So, when exactly did you meet your ghost in the upstairs hall?" Jarrod asked.

Heath smiled. He was caught. "Mine was in the kitchen, not the upstairs hall. A couple months after I got here. It wasn't me, though. It was somebody I never really got a good look at, a voice I didn't recognize. I was bothered because I was still trying to fit in and I was fussing with Nick a lot."

"How often did you get a visit?"

"Three nights in a row before I heard what this ghost of mine was trying to tell me." Heath took a puff on his cigar.

"Curious, isn't it?" Jarrod said. "How that number three turns up everywhere. What did your ghost tell you?"

"It just kept saying 'roll.'"

"Roll?"

"I finally decided it meant 'roll with the punches,' and not just the real punches. Nick was throwing a lot of word punches my way. I just decided to roll with them, quit throwing them back at him. I guess it made him feel like he was the boss again and after that, he eased up and we got to know each other the way we were meant to."

"Did you ever tell Nick about your nightly visitor?"

"No," Heath said. "No real need to. He'd have just thought I was crazy."

"But you told Silas," Jarrod said.

Heath looked surprised. "All right, you knew I had a ghost after me and you knew I talked to Silas about it. How did you know? Did Silas tell you about it, or was it that other you?"

Jarrod laughed. "No. When you talked to me about it the other morning, you called my specter 'shadows and wind.' That's what Silas called it when I talked to him about it."

Now Heath laughed. "I wonder how much information Silas has stored away on us? From the times we couldn't talk to anybody else about something but we could talk to him?"

"Plenty, I'll bet," Jarrod said. "You call me a secret keeper. Silas has everybody around here beaten at that."

"Well, I reckon he was right. Our ghosts really were shadows and wind shaking us up enough to deal with what was really bothering us."

"Are you sure about that?" Jarrod asked. "Were we just giving form to our worries at the time, or is there really some ghostly figure roaming the house at night, just being ready to help us out when we need it?"

"If it really is some ghost, I wonder why he never appeared to you before now."

Jarrod shrugged. "Did you run into him anywhere before here?"

Heath shook his head.

"Well, I suppose he might have just moved in – saw you on the road and decided to follow you in. Or we're getting needier the older we get and that spirit decided to help us out. Who knows how ghosts work? Maybe we'll get some understanding if he starts appearing for anybody else in the family."

Heath thought about that for a second and then suddenly took on his cockeyed smile. "You know what I'm wondering?"

Jarrod got it at the same time. "The same thing I am, probably. Silas said he's seen a spirit or two in the house. Do you think maybe Nick has something he isn't telling us?"

Two sets of blue eyes twinkled.

"Hey, Nick!" Jarrod yelled.

The End


End file.
